It's a foggy predawn morning in Newbridge. Tom Scharpling wakes to a loud sound, like a gunshot. He gets out of bed and looks out the window. Jillian Barberie is in the driveway, looking at her car. "I think the muffler is broken," she yells up to Tom. "I can't drive this car. Now I'm going to be late to work." Jillian drives every morning to Newbridge International Airport, where she catches a jet to Los Angeles, where she is featured on Good Day L.A. Some people have asked her if this transcontinental commute is worth it. The main reason she lives in New Jersey, but works in California, is to avoid crossing paths with Gene Simmons, who does the reverse commute every day from his home in Beverly Hills to work at his Newbridge car dealership. On past occasions, Simmons has asked Barberie to "feel his wallet." Creeped out by this, Barberie does everything she can to avoid seeing him.
"Just take my Hummer, dear," Tom yells down. "I'll take your Ferrari down to muffler row today." Tom was unemployed. His radio show was recently cancelled, after having gotten the lowest amount of pledges of all the shows on WFMU during the annual marathon. Hot Rockin' Ronnie was back on the air in his timeslot. Philly Boy Roy's successful string of movies, portraying Tom as a fat, hairy hunchback, have made him all but unemployable. The people at 33 1/3 won't return his calls, and his treatise on the Styx masterpiece "The Grand Illusion" is just gathering dust. How did he end up in this sorry state?
Jillian roars away in the Hummer. Unable to get back to sleep, Tom decides to get an early start on the day. First, he walks Dogmo, fierce-eyed and thirsty for human blood, to the park. There were few casualties. He returns, showers, and puts on his job-hunting clothes-- one of Paul F. Tompkin's cast-off suits. Since Tom's fall, Tompkins won't return any of his calls, but he did send a care package of Peanut Chews and suits stained with cheez whiz and oil and vinegar. Like all of America, Tompkins had caught Philly Phever. After doing his best to scrape the Philadelphia food residue off his suit, Tom walks a few blocks to Das Sieben Und Der Elf for a soy mocha, a bagel, and a copy of the Newbridge Herald Times-Herald, and returns home.
Tom clears his dining room table of the stacks of rare early seventies psychedelic records and Beatles bootlegs and spreads out the paper. He eyes the classifieds. "No Ape-Men need apply." Tom sighed. Didn't Cavemen teach people about tolerance? Although his lightly muscled and evenly tanned frame was smooth and hairless, the image of him as a diseased, rabid, half-crazed throwback that Philly Boy Roy's movies presented was so compelling that only Jillian Barberie could see him for who he really was. Everyone else saw only the idea of Tom, and not the man.
Disheartened, Tom knocks the bagel crumbs out of his bushy blonde mustache. He gets his keys, and drives the banging, spluttering Ferrari down to Muffler Row.
